The issue of flight control software maturity keeps rearing its ugly head.I believe a similar issue was found to be responsible for the demise of the Phobos 1 & 2 missionsback in 1989.

I'm not sure if this comes under the heading of ``politics', but, in my opinion,it was a mistake to opt for such an ambitious mission profile. A reflight of the Phobosmissions with in situ surface science being the main objective would still yield fantastic results and, more importantly,would have provided a lot more margin for testing. This, above all other factors, has proven the primary killer of planetaryprobes.

Anyway, I hope they pull it off. Even getting to orbit around Mars and releasing the Yinghuo modulewould show that the Russians are back in business. Of course, if they do land on the surface and allthose lovely instruments start to send back data..yum, yum..

I hope that translation difficulties are responsible for this FSW statement. I can buy off on uplinking patches; that happens all the time. But if they're talking about not flying with at least a full-up ver 1.0 of the FSW...boy oh boy, is that ever asking for trouble.

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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.

Got a chance to read a commentary by Frank Mooring, Jr. in the June 13 issue of Aviation Week. I don't subscribe, but my boss does, and get to read them.

It looks like there will be flybys of Deimos before Phobos-Grunt arrives at Phobos.

"After arriving in Mars orbit late next year, the mission will spend a few months studying the planet, Phobos and the smaller Deimos before closing on the larger moon and landing."

I was wondering about that and hoping for more info on Deimos. I wish the Russians, the Chinese and the Americans good luck with their martian projects. I seems that while other are worrying about the end of the world, we will be celebrating the opening of a whole new realm of exploration at Mars.

At LPSC last year I spoke to Chinese scientists working on their orbiter, and they were fully aware of the need for images of Deimos, and they were intending to take some. Their spacecraft will be deployed in a Deimos-crossing orbit and has no orbit-change capability of its own (I think). I didn't know Phobos-SRM would stay in that orbit long enough to also get images of Deimos but it makes sense that they would. There is a substantial chunk of Deimos, roughly longitudes 90 to 180 east, which has been seen only in one single image (a second one having been overexposed), so we don't even have stereo imaging of it. And many other areas with limited resolution or poor lighting.

Does anybody know of an updated diagram of Phobos-Grunt in landed configuration? All the pictures and diagrams I have show the old, domical design for the sample return capsule, which has apparently been changed to a cone whose pointy end sticks down into the spacecraft.

Even better would be a simulated view of the spacecraft sitting on Phobos....

There was just 15 mins ago a talk at the AOGS Conference in Taipei. The speaker Mikhail Verigin? was not one of the authors (which may be a sign that the project leadershipis busy back in Russia). They showed config drawings such as Emily described.

Launch is planned 11.11.2011 (window Oct 25- Nov 20 : not sure what this means - was that merely a statement of when the optimum date in the window is, or is it a concession that they know they wont be ready at the start of the window?)

Plan to acquire 10-20 samples, each 0.5-1.5cm3. Intriguingly there is a 'mail tube'a (presumably pneumatic) transfer system to insert the samples into the return capsule (not sure if/how the samples are kept separate)

This article on the IAC speculates that a 2011 launch is uncertain (no source given):

QUOTE

Popovkin also may meet with Chinese representatives on the status of the Phobos-Grunt mission to the Martian moon Phobos, with a Chinese probe riding piggyback. The mission has missed one planetary launch window already, and there are suggestions that continuing problems with the main Russian spacecraft may force another 26-month delay from the planned launch this fall.

I've not noticed this rumour anywhere else, and it seems hard to square with its reportedly being shipped to the launch site as reported in Emily's What's Up posting. Surely with only a month to go until the scheduled launch, those involved must know one way or the other by now?

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